


Photograph

by Orangepencils



Series: To Do Lists [6]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen, mention of The Overdose, mention of kent/jack from the Q days, parse makes a brief appearence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 23:47:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9351914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orangepencils/pseuds/Orangepencils
Summary: How Jack came to like photography.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Posted on Tumblr but now posting it to AO3.

** Photograph **

****

Photograph

It starts as an unimportant event, in the grand scheme of things. Bob gets Alicia one of those new digital cameras for her birthday, since they are all the rage and Jack’s interest is piqued.

 

Alicia doesn’t mind showing him how it works. The camera can store many pictures and they can delete the ones they don’t want to print.

 

This small machine amazes Jack. He snaps a picture of his mother and Alicia laughs. She lets him play with the features when he is bored and he loves it.

 

Sometimes, if Jack feels particularly mulish, Alicia dresses up and they have their own modelling session – Jack the photographer, Alicia the model.

 

During the off-season, Jack asks if he can borrow the camera and Alicia says yes. Jack takes the camera outside and narrates his own safari-photographer adventures.

 

“And now, famous National Geographic photographer, Jack L. Zimmermann, approaches the rare sparrow of Montreal for a breathtaking close-up. He’s still as can be and the sparrow doesn’t even hear him...”

 

Alicia thinks it’s endearing. The neighbours let Jack borrow their dog for a shoot.

 

Jack has fun.

 

The moment Jack discovers that there is a sepia feature on the camera; he goes all out trying to recreate “historical portraits and settings.” It’s not a big success, but Alicia lends him what props she can find and the sepia phase brings them all the way to autumn.

 

\--

 

By his following birthday, Jack reaches that special age where going on vacation with his parents is not exciting. Regardless, he tags along, because where else would he go and what else would he do?

 

He gets bored at the beach and when he asks his mom if he can take the camera to that “cool marsh” a little ways ahead, she agrees, keeping an eye on him.

 

Jack has a blast. In fact, it’s the most fun he has during the entire trip. He finds many tiny crabs that scurry around and side step him. He tries to get as close to them as possible without actually laying on the ground with the camera on a crab. It’s close though.

 

When he returns to the beach towels where his parents are, mud stains on his shorts, knees and elbows, with his hair dishevelled and a smile that could rival the sun’s brightness, he eagerly props himself next to his mother to show her his cool pictures.

 

For Christmas, Bob gets Jack a history of photography book and Jack thinks it’s the greatest thing ever. He finds the evolution of the camera fascinating and he briefly wonders if maybe, one day, he could try developing his own pictures.

 

Like, when he retires from a long and glorious hockey career.

 

\--

 

For his fifteenth birthday, Alicia and Bob get him his own digital camera. It’s an Elf PowerShot and it has a feature Jack falls in love with. It allows him to select one colour only and the camera reveals all the objects in the shot with that colour, while everything else is in greyscale.

 

Jack spends the evening of his birthday reading the manual of his new camera from front to back and can’t wait for the following morning to really try it out.

 

His Dad finds an old tripod in the attic and gives it to him. It’s perfect and Jack has fun playing with time-lapses. He throws objects in the air, passes them in front of the camera, and even makes his own stop-motion film. (It’s not very long and it’s just pictures, but he thinks it’s cool how the hockey puck goes from one side of the frame to the other in eight pictures and that it looks like the puck moved on its own.)

 

\--

 

When the hockey season starts again, Jack asks his parents if it’s okay for him to bring the camera to games and tournaments. He promises he’ll be careful and that the camera won’t make him lose focus on the game. His parents agree, reminding him that he is responsible for it and that if anything happens to the camera, they won’t get him a new one.

 

Jack swears and promises.

 

Jack always brings his camera, but doesn’t always take it out. He’s shy about it at first, unsure how the guys are going to react to it, but when they find out, they have a field day with it.

 

Immediately, they want Jack to take their picture as they pull pranks on one another, do daring tricks, or what the coach calls “stupid, idiotic things.”

 

Still, it’s good fun and Jack likes the attention not being on him. Some of his teammates keep asking him to take their picture and Jack finds himself documenting a lot of their season through the various silly things they do. He enjoys it, likes how it brings out the playful side of the others and at the end of the season; he helps one of the assistant coaches make a collage for their retiring coach.

 

The fact that they use most of his pictures makes him only a little prouder.

 

Okay, a lot.

 

\--

 

Jack likes photography, but his real love is hockey. He likes being behind the camera and he likes taking pictures of whatever strikes his fancy. He doesn’t consider himself to be very good, but he doesn’t have to be and that’s just fine. Photography comes with zero pressure.

 

When his parents ask him what he wants for his seventeenth birthday, he doesn’t say he’s been eyeing the new DSLR. He knows he could get it with his own money, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want his father to think that photography is more important than hockey, or that he’s going to let himself be distracted by a hobby – a toy.

 

But, it doesn’t hurt to look at the flyers when he gets them.

 

His time in the Q is interesting in many different ways. He still carries his camera with him wherever he goes and some of his teammates chirp him for it, but they all agree it’s cool that captain Jack is there to document their “dumbass shit.” It gets better when they go on road trips and Jack films some of the things they do, when they get to the hotel.

 

It’s also interesting when Kent Parson one day walks up to him and takes the camera right out of Jack’s hands to snap a picture of him. The room falls silent for a full two seconds, before Jack laughs, saying that in all the years, no one’s ever tried taking pictures of him.

 

It happens again.

 

There’s an entire folder on his computer with pictures of his years in the Q. He knows there are hundreds of pictures of their victories, of the roadies, of Kent, but he doesn’t look at them.

 

(There’s even a separate folder of pictures of Kent. Pictures he would never share with anyone. Private pictures they took together when they felt bold and daring. Pictures he thought were beautiful. Pictures of sun-kissed skin, freckles, soft blonde hair, and luscious lips. Pictures that could ruin a career if anyone ever found them. He wonders if he keeps them for that reason. To have an excuse for his feelings.)

 

Jack’s surprised he hasn’t deleted them yet or that they haven’t been lost with the years. He almost deletes them when he returns home from rehab and finds his camera with some of his last pictures on it. Yet, he transfers them without looking and hides them in a folder on his computer.

 

His therapist would be proud. Maybe.

 

Jack doesn’t expect presents from his parents that year, especially not after what he did to them, but when he wakes up on his birthday, his Dad greets him with French toast and his Mom places a neatly wrapped box at his seat.

 

He feels selfish for being happy, but he hides it behind a curious face, as he picks up the card to read it.

 

_“For new beginnings and new memories, whatever they may be.”_

Jack unwraps his present and stills when he sees the newest model of that same DSLR he had been looking at a few years back. His throat goes tight and he tries not to make his hands shake, but it’s hard, when all he wants to do is a mixture of crying and hiding.

 

He manages to choke out a watery “thank you,” before his Mom envelops him in a tight hug and his Dad ruffles his hair.

 

He still doesn’t know what he’s going to do with his life, but he promises himself that he’ll try to make the most of it, one photograph at a time.

 

**FIN**

**Started writing: February 16 th 2016, 8h32pm**

**Finished writing: February 16 th 2016, 10h24pm**

**Started typing: September 12 th 2016, 11h24am**

**Finished typing: September 12 th 2016, 12h06pm**


End file.
